


Of Sun and Stars and Moon

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: The Travel Collection: Drabbles, Snippets, and Supershorts [71]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Irish Mythology, Near Eastern Mythology
Genre: F/M, GFY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:22:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various snippets and shorts concerning mythological figures, with random crossovers into various fandoms as I feel moved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Choser of the Slain

Her bones are hollow and light, and she leaps into the air with the grace of the birds who are most her own. Falling through blue, laughing and gleeful as she soars over the battlefields, looking for the best she can gather to her. Feathers as black as a raven's wing drift from her hair as she kneels next to one, choking on his own blood. Young and sweet and crying for his mother as she leans down to press an open-mouthed kiss to his lips. Marking him as her own, and gathering him in her arms as his breath leaves his body.

All the best of them will be hers, fallen on the field, crying for mother, for homeland, for the mercy of death. A storm of feathers, black crows jeering and wheeling and laughing in her wake.


	2. Queen of Winter

Once, she danced among spring flowers in brilliant shades, giggling with carefully chosen companions.

Once, she wore a crown of summer blooms while she sat in the shadow of her mother, queen of the fertile world.

Today, she twists gold and red leaves into a crown with the final blossoms of autumn, touched with the frost of winter. Let her mother rule the fertile world, she will have her own realm, of fire under frost, of the dormant and the dead.

Once, she dressed in pale colors and girded herself with chains of clover and buttercup.

Once, she raised her arms to the warm sun and basked in its glory.

Today, she wears the shades of dusk, belted round with twists of blackened vines and poison-red berries brilliant as blood. She reigns from a throne of ice and bone, head high and heart hardened to the scorn of the gods.

Once, she was the daughter of Demeter. Once, she was the wife of Hades.

Once, she was an innocent. Once, she was a matron. Once, she was beloved of the gods, of a god.

Today, she is Persephone, the Queen of Winter. She is the daughter of the world, she is the beloved of humanity. She brings frost with her touch, snow in her wake. The winds howl a chorus of icy beauty to her name, and she gathers the scorned and the forgotten, the stolen and the wronged, to her side and promises them a better death than life.

Let her mother rule the fertile and golden sunlit world of the living.

Let the gods scorn her and say she has betrayed her purpose.

Let the myths say she is a woman taken by force by a god dark and dour.

She knows who she is, and she will glory in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Garden of Eden](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/2052277).


	3. The Winnower of Death

Her angry screams can be heard for miles when she finds the body of her husband. Laid out pale on bloodied sands outside the city which owes its loyalty to their brother, not cut across his bowel or his throat, nor with a wound between the ribs on his chest. Only across the backs of his thighs, all the way to the bone, and a deep wound between his shoulderblades where a knife must have been driven into his heart.

She carries his body home, laying him out to wash him and stitch his wounds closed. Murmuring chants and applying herbs as she goes, working magic into the thread and the pastes. Lighting candles and refusing to leave Baal's body as she does her work. Only when all the wounds are healed, and his heart begins to beat once more does she leave the home they have shared for years, and the city that they call their own.

For he will not live until he once more breathes in his soul, and his soul will not return until his murder is avenged.

In one hand, she carries the flail she has used to thresh wheat with the wives of their farmers. In the other, she carries the spear she uses to hunt cheetahs and jackels. Her armor is burnished to shine like the sun, and her hair has been shorn in her grief, leaving her head all but bare.

"Come out and face me, Mot." Her voice is strange to her ears, harsh and loud after days of near silence. Raw from the heat of the sands outside the gates of Mot's city, where she stands to demand his presence and his death for the harm he has caused her and hers.

She will wait as long as she must, standing before the gates with only the light of the torches on the wall at night, and the blazing sun upon her back during the day. Calling for her enemy to come face her, and the justice he has earned for his harm to their brother.

It is a full ten days before he dares to face her, coming from the gates with a shield of skin stretched over bone, armor of the same, and a sword of bronze unsheathed. Skin painted with ocher and soot, and expression as grim as her own. He thinks to win this, she knows, for he has ever seen her as a soft creature of the harvest and of the bedchamber.

Mot has forgotten she is the hunter and the protector. That she is the mother who must keep the jackels from her children. The great lady who keeps the wolves and hyenas from the farmers in their fields and shepherds with their flocks.

He fights well, but he fights as a man who has only prestige and honor to win. Battles against other men who do not hunger for flesh and blood and bone.

Her flail, weighted and barbed, tears flesh from bone, and shatters ribs with the force of her blows. Her spear leaves bloody wounds that weaken, and pierces Mot's heart when he falters once too often. She takes his blood from the wounds, and leans over to catch his last breath with her mouth.

"Do not forget again, brother, who I am."

Mot will rise again, she knows, but she leaves his broken body upon the sands as he had done with their brother, and returns to where a body lives without soul or breath. Annoints Baal's forehead with the blood of their brother, breathes into his body the soul that had been stolen. And laughs enough to weep when he rises, and takes her into his arms, bloodied armor and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "Grief".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [A Cloak of Mourning](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/2183507).


	4. Where She's Always Been

She is where she has always been, watching over the land of her people. It doesn't matter that they do not revere her as once they did, their allegience to their young god - old god, father, child, beloved - greater than to the gods of the past. They do not need to revere her and worship her as such, for there are always sacrifices to her name and aspect, soldiers fallen in defense of the land and the people, crops harvested and threshed and consumed, lovers coming together in the joy of each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Hollow".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Lost Deeps](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/2020100).


End file.
